Our Common Dharma: I am thankful for my religion

I am so thankful for my religion. But I want to put particular emphasis on one word in that sentence: my. Because no one else can actually have it.

Each of us has a unique worldview when it comes to the Ultimate Reality. Understanding our own — and how it differs from that of even the person sitting next to us in the same church, practicing the same religion and hearing the same theology — is not only important, it’s vital.

When I use the word “religion,” I mean something broader than Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism or any other named tradition. I mean the system each of us develops for navigating existence.

We all have a religion. Even if you don’t think you do.

We all have beliefs about what matters, what makes a person good, and what constitutes a life well lived. Some are carefully considered. Others are inherited, intuitive or superstitious. Many operate behind the curtain of our conscious awareness to the point we don’t even recognize them as beliefs. But we live according to them nonetheless. For good or not.

Of course, I understand that I am giving the word religion an additional definition here. But perhaps I am harkening to one of the many possible origins claimed of the word. The one I am referring to is that “religio” comes from “relegere” meaning “to read again.” To my mind, this corresponds with a quote from theologian James Luther Adams: “An unexamined faith is not worth having.”

To most of us, religion means the type of spirituality we practice as part of a larger group with a shared understanding. But there is a difference between what I am referring to as our personal religion and the spiritual communities in which many of us explore it.

My own spiritual community is Unitarian Universalism. But in the way I am speaking of religion here — as a recognition that each of us has a unique understanding of life and how to steer ourselves through it — being a UU is spiritual shorthand for the group with which my personal religious views most closely associate.

Think of a maple tree. Each leaf is slightly different, but similar enough to the others that we can still identify it as a maple leaf, even after it falls away from the tree.

As for your own religion, you may not believe in God, an afterlife, or anything supernatural whatsoever. You still possess your own working theory of reality and make decisions according to what you believe is true, good and worth pursuing. Each of us has standards that define life for our own purposes.

That is what I mean by religion here: the largely invisible architecture through which each of us understands reality and decides how to live. And no two architectures are exactly alike. Imagine that the two of us are looking at the same landscape. I describe what I see, then step aside so you can stand in precisely the same spot. You still won’t see exactly what I saw.

The light has changed. The clouds have moved. And you brought different eyes — and a different life, with experiences that taught you what to notice.

There is no neutral observer. There is only the person standing there. You.

Two Catholics do not possess precisely the same Catholicism. Two Buddhists do not possess the same version of Buddhism. Two atheists absolutely do not inhabit the same atheism. They may share vocabulary and practices. But inwardly, every worldview is singular.

We should stop treating that as a problem to be solved.

We are now a society showing early signs of having the maturity to celebrate our religious individuality. Obviously, the battle for that recognition rages on. But the fact that there is a battle at all reveals the growing diversity of belief and nonbelief fueling it — and the growing conviction that we have the right to stand within our own understanding of faith without having to justify it or apologize for it to anyone.

There is a spiritual practice hidden inside this continuing cultural expansion. It begins with a difficult question that sounds easy: What do I really think?

Not: What was I taught? What does my denomination or family say? What am I supposed to believe? Not even: What do I say I believe? But, what do I actually think?

We are beginning to recognize that we carry beliefs we never consciously chose — assumptions about God, goodness, death, bodies, money, authority, suffering, family and morality. Some represent our deepest convictions. Others are simply furniture someone placed in the room before we arrived.

Spiritual maturity requires occasionally turning on all the lights and taking a real inventory.

Do I actually believe this? Why? Does it make me more compassionate? Or more frightened? Does it help me — and others — flourish? If nobody expected me to believe it, would I still?

This is not an argument for discarding tradition. Traditions contain extraordinary wisdom. They give us language, stories, practices, and maps drawn by people who walked through the mystery before us. They give us belonging and community.

But inheritance and ownership are different things. At some point, an inherited faith has to become the examined faith that James Luther Adams encouraged. Whatever survives that examination becomes genuinely our own.

We must become more comfortable owning it.

As a human being with an inherent right of self-determination, you are allowed to wonder, change your mind, and say, “I don’t know.” You do not need to apologize for understanding existence differently from the person beside you.

That doesn’t mean every belief is equally factual, harmless, or beyond criticism. Beliefs have consequences, particularly when we use them to control other people’s lives. But there is an enormous difference between saying, “This is how I understand the mystery,” and saying, “Therefore, you must live according to my understanding of the mystery.”

The first is testimony. The second is domination.

One clear sign that we have become truly secure in our own religious viewpoint is that we no longer need someone else to convert to it.

Religion should be more like show-and-tell than used car salesmanship: Look at this idea I found beautiful. This practice helped me. This story changed how I understand suffering. This is how I make sense of God. This is why I don’t believe in God. This is what I imagine happens when we die. This is what I don’t know.

Then we put our treasure on the table and listen while somebody else shows us theirs. Being hospitable to the beliefs of others is holy curiosity.

Once we take the idea that we must convert someone to our way of thinking off the table, curiosity can fill the vacuum. Instead of asking, “How can I convince you to see what I see?” we can ask, “What does the world look like from where you are standing?”

At their best, religious communities should make that conversation not only possible, but safe.

Religious communities that cannot make room for such conversation may be revealing a deeper insecurity than they recognize. When certainty depends upon converting everyone else, agreement becomes a source of self-validation. But a faith secure in itself need not fear the existence of another person’s faith.

A congregation need not be a place where everyone believes the exact same things. They don’t really anyway. It should be a place where people become better at discovering what they believe, and better at hearing what others believe without becoming threatened by the difference.

My own belief that this should be the case is why I fit most comfortably within the box called Unitarian Universalism. It’s a living tradition that deliberately explores the diversity of belief in the world, searches for the commonalities among those beliefs, and assumes that truth exists in the overlap.

Imagine a religious community whose success is measured not by how effectively it produces agreement, but by how courageously it cultivates thoughtful human beings: people who know what they think, know why they think it, remain willing to reconsider it, and are genuinely fascinated by the individuality of others.

In the 21st century, this may be one of the greatest purposes a religious community can serve.

Not giving people a religion. Helping them discover the one they already have. Helping them recognize how beliefs they may not even know they possess govern their actions every day, and then decide whether those beliefs are serving them or anyone else.

So yes, I am thankful for my religion. Deeply thankful.

And I am thankful for the spiritual community in which I am fortunate to serve as a minister.

I hope you are thankful for yours, whatever it is, whatever you call it, even if you don’t consider it religion at all.

Take inventory of it. Examine it. Question it. Refine it. Notice which parts were handed to you, and decide which ones you want to keep. Learn the architecture of your own inner world. Stand in it without apology.

Then open the door, and be brave enough to tell us what you see. Those then still among you are your people.

Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister of the First Church in Lancaster at the Bulfinch Meetinghouse in Massachusetts, progressive theologian and essayist on optimistic spirituality in the Information Age. Follow him on Substack, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.